Just Finished: In Need of Therapy

I need to confess something. I did not, in fact, "just finish" Tracie Banister's fabulous novel In Need of Therapy. I read it at the end of November. Yikes! It happened to be in that bad time of finishing up school work, preparing for Christmas, and having a few other reviews on the go. Obviously I really need to start working on my bookish resolution of being more organized!

Here's the synopsis:

Lending a sympathetic ear and dispensing sage words of advice is all part of the job for psychologist Pilar Alvarez, and she’s everything a good therapist should be: warm, compassionate, supportive. She listens, she cares, and she has all the answers, but how’s the woman everyone turns to in their hour of need supposed to cope when her own life starts to fall apart?
While working hard to make a success of her recently-opened practice in trendy South Beach, Pilar must also find time to cater to the demands of her boisterous Cuban family, which includes younger sister Izzy, an unemployed, navel-pierced wild child who can't stay out of trouble, and their mother, a beauty queen turned drama queen who’s equally obsessed with her fading looks and getting Pilar married before it’s “too late.” Although she’d like to oblige her mother and make a permanent love connection, Pilar’s romantic prospects look grim. Her cheating ex, who swears that he’s reformed, is stalking her. A hunky, but strictly off-limits, patient with bad-boy appeal and intimacy issues is making passes. And the sexy shrink in the suite across the hall has a gold band on his left ring finger.
When a series of personal and professional disasters lead Pilar into the arms of one of her unsuitable suitors, she's left shaken, confused, and full of self-doubt. With time running out, she must make sense of her feelings and learn to trust herself again so that she can save her business, her family, and most importantly, her heart.

I had so much fun reading this novel! Pilar was such an interesting character to read about. Main characters who are psychologists are always interesting because, as we all know, no one is perfect and it's nice to read about how someone finally starts taking the advice they've been giving out. Does that make sense? Pilar, as a psychologist, helps her patients grow and work through their issues. I loved reading about how she finally took a good, hard look at her life and realized that she had some issues herself.

Pilar's family plays a fairly large part in this novel and they're...something else. Talk about a big and crazy family! I think I sometimes wished that there wasn't quite so much involving her family (especially when her mother was insistent that she was throwing away a good thing by breaking up with her seemingly perfect boyfriend - so frustrating!) because I wanted to get back to her career and romance issues.

Speaking of romance issues, I loved Ford. Just loved him. And his son? My goodness, he was so adorably awesome! I really enjoyed watching the romance begin between Pilar and Ford and wondered how Banister would have everything turn out. Would they get together? Was he actually still married? When are they going to smarten up and tell each other how they feel?!? There was enough happening to keep me guessing and I definitely appreciated that.

One final note - I loved Pilar's best friend Sara. She was just the kind of BFF a girl needs and I loved that we got to know just enough about her. Too often novels will focus too much on a secondary character and it takes away from the main story. I really liked how the ending featured her work and we got to know what happens to her in the end as well.

I would definitely recommend In Need of Therapy by Tracie Banister to my fellow chick lit fans. I have yet to read Tracie's first novel, Blame It on the Fame but it has moved up my to be read list after reading this novel!

Happy reading :)

*A copy of this novel was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review*